How a more aggressive messaging angle impacts email acquisition
Alliance Defending Freedom
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 08/16/2018 - 09/07/2018
Jack Phillips, a client of Alliance Defending Freedom, had two significant events happen to him in a short window of time. After his Supreme Court victory, he was attacked again by the State of Colorado for a situation remarkably similar to the original case. As a result of this attack, Jack decided to take the fight back to the state and is suing them for the continued harassment of his religious freedom. With these two events happening around the same time, we wanted to find out which angle the ADF subscribers would find most appealing.
To do this, we created a two statements for visitors to add their name to. One took the standard approach of “Defending Religious Freedom” while the other was far more aggressive and focused on “Fighting Back.”
Research Question
Will the more aggressive messaging approach be more appealing to the ADF audience resulting in increased email acquisition?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Defend | 2.1% | $0.00 | ||
| T1: | Fight | 2.5% | 14.9% | 99.4% | $0.00 |
This experiment has a required sample size of 16,975 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 67,204, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.
Flux Metrics Affected
The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:
0% increase in traffic
× 14.9% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
After running for over two weeks, we found that the more aggressive “fighting back” language increased email acquisition by 15%. This unique situation allowed us to tap into a messaging approach that is not often applicable to the types of cases that ADF represents. In most cases, it is all about defending an injustice but, with this situation, we were able to take an approach that appealed to a greater number of visitors.